Nicky Morgan said there was no alternative to the squeeze on teachers’ pay.
Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PA

The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has accused the National Union of Teachers of putting children’s education at risk as its members began a 24-hour strike over school funding, pay and teachers’ workload.

Thousands of schools are expected to close on Tuesday after 92% of NUT members voted in favour of industrial action. The union says it has a mandate for the strike even though only 24% of members voted in the strike ballot.

National Union of Teachers backs ballot on strike action

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Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the union’s acting general secretary, Kevin Courtney, said: “This is a popular strike amongst our members because they know the issues really matter to the young people they are teaching.”

He pointed out that the government had imposed a real-terms cut in funding per pupil.

“George Osborne and Nicky Morgan are freezing the cash per pupil that they give to schools but they are not putting anything in for inflation,” he said.

Morgan said there was no alternative to the squeeze on teachers’ pay. She told Today: “Across the public sector we have had to take difficult decisions in the last six years. And public sector pay is one of the areas that has been impacted. The alternative is that we end up in a situation like Spain or Greece, where they had to slash education budgets by up to 30%, where thousands of teachers were made redundant.”

She also urged the NUT to try to resolve the dispute through talks. Morgan said: “Kevin Courtney says this strike is popular with teachers. I can tell you it is not popular with school leaders I’ve been talking to and it is certainly not popular with parents for whom this is a huge inconvenience.

“It is also not popular with pupils who are missing out on a day’s education. If Kevin Courtney wants to sort this out then the place to do that is the talks that are already happening, not by taking strike action which puts children’s education at risk.”

Courtney said talks had reached a stalemate because of Morgan’s failure to acknowledge the real-terms cut in funding.

He said: “We would like to resolve these things through talks. We don’t want to disrupt children’s education or parents’ working lives but in the talks we are having Nicky Morgan doesn’t acknowledge the reality. She wrote to me on Saturday saying the school budget is going to be protected in real terms, which isn’t true. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says [there is an] 8% cut [per pupil]. That’s why class sizes are going up.”

Morgan said: “I just don’t recognise that picture. The schools budget is the highest it has ever been this year at £40bn; it has gone up by £4bn since 2011/12. We have a programme of talks with the unions. That continues.”

In a letter to Courtney, Morgan said teachers were choosing a “path of disruption over negotiation and discussion”.

The union says it wants to to resume negotiations on teacher contracts to allow workloads to be addressed. It is also demanding increased funding to schools and education, and wants guaranteed terms and conditions in all types of schools.

In a statement, Courtney added: “Schools are facing the worst cuts in funding since the 1970s. The decisions which headteachers have to make are damaging to our children and young people’s education. Class sizes going up, school trips reduced, materials and resources reduced, and subjects – particularly in the arts – are being removed from the curriculum. Teaching posts are being cut or not filled when staff leave. All of this just to balance the books.”